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CHAPTER X

Inner or Spiritual Body

In order to form a conception of what kind of
body the surviving Self may have, it seems best
for the moment to go back to the genesis of
our present body. We saw (chapter vii.) that
we were compelled to suppose, even in the first
germ of our actual body an intelligent form
of some kind at work, which while gathering
up and representing race-memories of the past,
presided over and directed their rehabilitation in
the present, thus building up the present body
according to a certain pattern—(though subject
of course to modification by outer difficulties
and obstacles). From the very first, the exceeding
complexity and delicacy of the movements
within the germ-cells, combined with the decisiveness
of their divisions and differentiations, and
the perfection and adaptation of the bodily
structures and organs ultimately produced, all
point in the suggested direction.[91] At the same
time, we were compelled to conclude that this
form, whose first manifestations in the tiny germ-cell
evidently originate from quite ultra-microscopic
177
movements, was itself invisible, invisible
through belonging either to an ultra-microscopic
world, or to a world of a fourth-dimensional or
other order of existence. I think, therefore, that
for the present we may accept that conclusion, and
fairly suppose that some such invisible form underlies
the genesis of each of our bodies.

But at the same time the conclusion of invisibility
must not be supposed to carry with it
the conclusion of immateriality. Quite the contrary.
A creature living in the two-dimensional
world formed by the water-film on the surface
of a pond might have no conception of the
water-world below or the air-world above—both
of which might be quite invisible to it; all
the same a fish or a bird breaking through the
surface would instantly cause some very powerful
and very material phenomena there! And again,
though atoms and electrons individually may
be quite invisible, it is only a question of their
number and the force of their electric charges,
as to how far they intrude upon what we call
the material world. Also, we must remember
that invisibility or imperceptibility does not by
any means imply non-occupation of space. On
the contrary again. For four-dimensional existence
carries with it an occupation of space which
is quite miraculous to us—as, for instance, the
power of appearing in two places at the same
time; while a number of ultra-microscopic atoms,
by their electrostatic attractions and repulsions,
may maintain definite relations of distance from
178
each other, and may altogether constitute a cloud
of considerable size and complex organization—quite
imperceptible as a rule, yet occupying a
definite area and fully capable of affecting material
things.

It may be a question, then, whether it is not
some such invisible cloud—perhaps of quite
human size and measurement—which at conception
begins to enter the fertilized germ-cell,
stimulating it to division, and penetrating further
and further into the newly-formed body-cells,
as by thousands and millions they divide and
multiply to form the growing organism. Whatever
it is, it is something of infinitely subtle
organization and constitution, representing the
inmost vitality of the body, and not that inmost
vitality in a merely general sense, but the vitality
of every portion and section of the body. It
establishes itself within the gross body (or it
builds that body round itself) and becomes the
organizer and provider of its life; maintains its
form and structure during life, fortifies it against
change and disease, and wards off as long as it
can the arrival of death.

What, then, of Death? Why, granted so much
as we have supposed, it seems easy to suppose
that at death this inner body passes away again.
It just leaves the gross body behind and passes
out of it. For a fourth-dimensional being this
must be easy to do! But not to presume too
much on other-dimensional conditions, if we only
assume the inner body to be such a cloud of
179
atoms or electrons as already mentioned, the
passage of such atoms through the tissues of the
gross body would be entirely in accordance with
the well-known facts of osmose and the diffusion
of liquids and gases, and would present no exceptional
or impossible problem. Through cell-walls
and muscular and other tissues such atoms
would pass, conceivably maintaining still their
relative ‘form’ and organization with regard to
each other, and forming a cloud similar to that
which entered the germ and other cells at conception
(though of course so far modified by
the life-experience), and leaving now the gross
body devitalized, and doomed to slow corruption
and to serve only as material for lower
forms.

One would not, of course, venture on conjectures
so speculative as the above, if it were
not that long tradition and history, and even
modern experience, so singularly confirm or favor
their general truth. The conception of a cloud-like
ghost—sometimes visible, sometimes invisible[92]—leaving
the body at death, roaming
through the fields of Hades or some hidden world,
and from time to time revisiting the glimpses of
the moon and the gaze of wondering mortals—penetrates
all literature and tradition. Among
all primitive peoples it seems to be accepted
as a matter of course; it informs the legends
180
and the drama and the philosophies of the more
cultivated; it claims detailed historical instances
and proofs[93] (as in the case of Field-marshal von
Grumbkoff, to whom the wraith of King Frederick
Augustus announced his own death—which had
just occurred; or in the case of the poet Petrarch,
to whom Bishop Colonna made a similar announcement);
and in modern times it has met
with extraordinary and in many quarters quite
unexpected confirmation at the hands of scientific
investigation.

To this evidence of general probability that
at death a vital and subtle yet substantial inner
body is withdrawn from every part and portion
of the gross body, we may add the evidence, such
as it is, from actual sensation and experience. In
the hour of death and in allied physical
changes sensations are experienced corresponding
to such a conclusion. Though necessarily there
is little quite direct evidence, for the actual
moment of death, yet in the just preceding stage,
of extreme weakness, the sensation of depletion
in every part of the body, and of withdrawal,
as of a hand being drawn out of a glove, is very
noticeable. (And it may be remarked that clairvoyants
not unfrequently observe, at death itself,
181
a luminous cloud of the general outline and
shape of the dying person being slowly distilled,
head first, from his or her head.) Furthermore,
in the state of ecstasy—which is closely allied
to death—the same sensation of withdrawal is
experienced. The person seems to himself to
stand outside and a little beyond his own body—and
doubtless this experience is denoted in the
very etymology of the word. In trance the
same: the medium experiences the extreme of
exhaustion while some portion of her vital
being is functioning (as it appears) outside.
Under anæsthetics it is a common experience to
dream that one has left the body and is flying
through space. (See The Art of Creation, p. 18.)
And again, in the case of love—whose close
relation to death we have several times already
noted—whether it be in the strain of emotional
desire or the stress of the physical orgasm
this ‘hand from the glove’ sensation is often
most acute and seems to suggest that every
portion of the body is contributing its part to
the process in hand; which indeed in this case
of love may very fairly be supposed to consist
in a transfer of the cloud-like organism
(or a large part of it) to the other person concerned.

There are cases, too, where in a kind of dream-consciousness
the sensation of the self passing
out through walls and other obstacles is so
powerful as to leave an impress on the mind
ever after. Such is the case already alluded to
182
(chapter viii. p. 148, supra) from Footfalls on the
Boundary of Another World, where a lady half
waking from sleep “felt herself carried to the
wall of her room, with a feeling that it must
arrest her further progress. But no; she seemed
to pass through it into the open air. Outside
the house was a tree; and this also she appeared
to traverse as if it interposed no obstacle.” She
thus passed to the house of a lady friend, held
a conversation with her, and in her dream
returned. But afterward the friend reported
that she had seen the apparition that night and
conversed with it. Similarly a young friend of
mine, dreaming one night that his mother (in
the same house) was ill, was intensely conscious
of dashing—not along corridors and through
doorways but through the partition walls of two
rooms—into the chamber where his mother slept,
when finding her all right he returned; and the
experience was so vivid that it remained with
him for days afterward.

Taking all these considerations together, we
may say that there is a strong general probability
in favor of the proposition put forward. And it
is interesting and important to find that at this
juncture modern science is coming out from her
old haunts and beginning seriously to tackle a
question which she has hitherto for the most
part evaded or ignored. The whole of the psychology
and even physiology of Death have (as
I have previously remarked) been sadly
183
neglected; but now and of late quite a number of
books on this subject have been published,[94] and
a good deal of scientific activity is moving in that
direction.

Professor Fournier d’Albe, in his book New
Light on Immortality,[95] has made some very interesting
suggestions—which though they may not
as yet be accounted more than suggestions, seem
to be in the right direction, and certainly acquire
some authority from his intimate command of
the modern discoveries in Physics as well as
in the field of Psychical Research. His view
is that every one of the twenty-five thousand
million million cells which constitute say the
human body has probably some ‘centrosome’ or
other vital point within it, which is in fact the
governing and organizing power of that cell. Such
point or collection of points, though ‘material,’
may likely weigh only a ten-thousandth part of the
cell-weight. Hence if this ‘soul’ was abstracted
from each cell, the total weight of the twenty-five
thousand billion souls resulting would be only a
ten-thousandth part of the body weight, or about
a fifth of an ounce! But these soul-fragments
or psychomeres as he calls them, would together
make up the total soul of the man, and—as already
explained—might not only by their negative
and positive charges maintain certain spatial
184
relations and organization with regard to each
other, but would, owing to their extreme minuteness,
easily pass through the tissues and liberate
themselves from the gross body. Thus a human
soul, weighing a fraction only of an ounce, but of
like shape and size to the human body, and of
intense vitality and subtlety, might disengage
itself at death, to begin a fresh career and to
enter into a new life—leaving the existing body
to fall to ruin and decay. Further, Professor
Fournier d’Albe, greatly bold in speculation, surmises
that such a spiritual body, discharging the
atmosphere from its interior frame, might quite
naturally rise in the air till it attained its position
of equilibrium at a great height up—say in a
region 35–80 miles over the earth, which would
thus become the (first) abode of the departed.

Whatever may be said about the details of
this theory, and whatever difficulties they may
present, the main outlines—as I have already
indicated—seem quite feasible and probable, and
in line with world-old belief and tradition. And
certain details (which we shall return to again)
are powerfully corroborated by modern observation.

Meanwhile it is interesting to find, in corroboration
of the general theory, that some experiments
lately carried out, in weighing the body
before and after death, have apparently
yielded the result of a decided loss of weight at
or very shortly after, the moment of Death.
Dr. Duncan M‘Dougall, experimenting with
185
considerable care, found that one of his patients
lost ¾ ounce precisely at death;[96] another lost ½
ounce, with an additional loss of 1 ounce
during the next few minutes, after which no
further loss took place; another yielded very
nearly the same result; and so on. Thus we have
the old Egyptian idea of the weighing of the soul
after death resuscitated in a very practical form in
modern times—only with the medical practitioner
in the place of Thoth, the great assessor of the
Underworld! And it would be satisfactory to
know how far modern observation of a normal
soul weight corresponds with ancient speculation
in the matter. It is curious anyhow to
find that Fournier d’Albe’s estimates are so
nearly corroborated by Dr. M‘Dougall; and we
must await with interest further and perhaps
more detailed observations along the same
line.

Another line along which something seems to
have been done by hard and fast science to corroborate
the general theory of the extrusion of
a cloud-like spirit form from the body at death,
is in the matter of photography. Dr. Baraduc,
in his book, Mes Morts: leurs manifestations186
(1908), gives an account of photographs which
he took of his wife’s body within an hour after
death and of his son’s body (in the coffin) nine
hours after death. When developed the plates all
showed cloud-like emanations hovering over the
corpses, not certainly having definite human outline,
but apparently shot through by lines and
streaks of light. And though here again the experiments
are not conclusive, they so far are corroborative,
and may be taken to indicate a direction
for further inquiry.

This last I think we are especially entitled to
say, on account of what has been already done in
the way of photographing the cloud-figures (some
of them very definite in outline) which are found
to emanate on occasions from mediums in the
state of trance. For notwithstanding the doubt
which has commonly been cast on all such photographs
and notwithstanding the very obvious ease
with which cameras can be manipulated and
shadow-figures of some kind fraudulently produced,
the evidence for the genuineness of some
such ‘spirit’ photographs is—to any one who
really studies it—beyond question. The celebrated
“Katie King,” who appeared at seances in
connection with the medium Florence Cook, and
during a period of two years or more was seen by
some hundreds of people—and especially studied
by Sir William Crookes—was photographed
several times under test conditions.[97] Professor
187
Charles Richet, who when he first heard of
Crookes’ conclusions was convulsed with laughter
over their supposed absurdity, afterward confessed
his error,[98] for time after time he not only
saw a phantasm (“Beni Boa”) in connection with
the Algerian medium Aisha, but obtained
photographs of the same.[99] Dr. A. R. Wallace,
in a long note, pp. 190, 191 of his book, Miracles
and Modern Spiritualism, gives a careful description
of his own experiments in this line. Several
different figures were at different times photographed
in connection with Mme. D’Espérance;
and the very detailed account, with illustrations,
which she gives of these phenomena in ch. xxvii.
of her book, Shadowland, must give the unbeliever
pause. And so on.[100] The evidence is so
abundant, and so on the whole so well confirmed,
that we are practically now compelled to admit
(and this is the point in hand) that cloud-like
forms of human outline emanating from a
medium’s or other person’s living body may
at times be caught by the photographic plate.
And this is important because it removes the
188
phenomenon from the region of the fanciful or
imaginative and gives it automatic and objective
registration.

That these forms occurring and occasionally
photographed in connection with mediums are
independent ‘spirits’ or souls is of course in no
way assumed. They may be such, or (what
seems more likely) they may be simply extensions
of the spiritual or inner body of the medium.
The point that interests us here is that their appearance
in either case points to the actual existence
of such an inner body, capable of becoming
extruded from the gross body, and of becoming
the seat and manifestation of intelligence.
Further than that we need not go at present.

But it will be objected, if the inner or spiritual
body is, as has just been supposed, of such a subtle
and tenuous nature as to be in itself quite invisible,
what connection can this have with phantoms
that can be photographed, or that can be seen, or
that can be actually touched and handled? This
question—the question as to how an excessively
rare and tenuous and invisible being may gradually
condense and materialize so as to come first
within the region of photographic activity, and
then within the region of normal visibility, and
so on into audible and tangible and material
existence and operation, I shall discuss more at
length in the next chapter. Suffice it here to point
out that the general consensus of thoughtful
opinion on this subject at the present time points
to a probable condensation of some kind, and
189
utilization of such suitable materials as may be to
hand, by which the subtle inner body gradually
clothes itself in an outer and denser garment.
Whether with Fournier d’Albe we suppose a soul-like
core to every single cell, or whether we take
a more diffused and general view, in any case we
seem compelled to believe that our actual bodies
are carried on by organizing powers distributed
in centres throughout the body.[101] If by any means
these vital centres were separated from the gross
body, it would still seem natural for them to continue
their organizing activity whenever they were
surrounded with suitable material. And if, as
seems likely, in the case of mediums and seances,
a considerable quantity of loose floating organic
material is commonly evolved from the bodies
of those present, such effluences might be quickly
caught up and condensed by any such vital
centres present into more or less visible forms
and figures.

If, by way of illustration, we were to suppose
an army-corps to represent a gross body, then
the officers, from corporals to general, would
represent the inner or organizing soul; and all
these officers together, though really being a
‘body,’ would constitute a mass so small and so
scattered compared with the mass-body of the
army, that in comparison they would be invisible,
and might easily all pass out and away from the
army without being observed. They might pass
out and conceivably organize another army-corps
190
elsewhere; but the result on that left behind (of
which they were really the soul) would soon be
seen in its complete disintegration and collapse.
Now suppose further that in a neighboring nation,
across the frontier, there was a great deal of
disaffection existing—that large masses of the
people there were out of touch with their own
Government (the case of a medium in trance),
and waiting for some one to come and organize
them. Then it is easy to imagine the small group
of officers aforesaid passing across the frontier
(quite unseen and unobserved) and immediately
on doing so finding ready to their hands a quantity
of material just suitable for their activity. In
a wonderfully short time the various officers
would begin to organize the various departments
of a new army-corps; the people would flock to
their standard. Even in a day or two the faint
outline of a new political form or movement
would show itself; and in a week this might become
substantial enough to exhibit serious manifestations
of force!

The general application of this to the question
in hand is obvious enough. But there is another
point which it illustrates—a point which
we have raised before. I am convinced that
science will never yield any very fruitful understanding
of the world, until it recognizes that
life and intelligence (of course in the broadest
signification) pervade all the phenomena of
Nature. It is perfectly useless to try to explain
human development, human destiny, mental
191
activity, the forces of nature, and so forth, in
terms of dead matter. No explanation of such
a kind could possibly be satisfying. And more
and more it is becoming clear that even what
we call the inorganic world is as subtle and swift
in its responses as what we call the organic.
Many difficulties must inevitably arise in any attempted
solution of the problem before us—that
problem which is generally denoted by “the nature
of the soul and its relation to the body”; but
we shall never arrive at any harmonious view
of the whole question until we are persuaded,
and practically assume, that life and intelligence
in some degree are characteristic of all that
we call ‘matter’ as well as of all we call
mind, and pervade the whole structure of the universe.
We shall then see that the forces, for
instance, which organize and direct the human
body, even down to its minutest parts, are probably
just as individual and intelligent in their
action as those (to take the example just given)
which organize and direct an army-corps.

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"'The truth, once announced, has the power not only to renew but to extend itself.
New Thought is universal in its ideals and therefore should be universal in its appeal.
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